SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Saga-Book of the Viking Society
material is associated with the Michael story in the South
English Legendary'" though not in precisely the same form
as Bergr has it, and the ideas that Lucifer was transformed
from angel to devil (Hms. I 678/17) or that God dividing
the light from the darkness represents the division of good
and bad angels (Hms. I 677/35), are of such frequent
occurrence that it is impossible to assign them to a
specific source.
The next incident Bergr discusses, an anecdote from
the Vitce Patrum, is simply an illustration of the powers of
angels in general and has nothing specifically to do with
Michael. It may well be that he is tending to think in
terms of "Michael and all angels", especially since he
probably uses among other things the lections for that
feast day. In this episode, one of the desert fathers,
Moses, goes to visit another, Isidore, in order to explain
that he cannot stay in his cell because he is so beset by
devils. Isidore advises him to go back and conquer them,
but finding Moses unwilling to do this, he demonstrates
from his own lodging a window towards the west from
which one can see a great multitude of devils, but then
another window towards the east where one can see the
great forces of good angels, with which sight Moses was so
strengthened that he was able to return to his cell.
There is a full translation of the Vitce Patrum 23 in which
this episode follows the Latin almost word for word.
Berg's version gives the impression of being an independent
translation, and a much freer one. There are no
similarities of vocabulary that would indicate he was
using an already existing translation, though it would
certainly have been available in Iceland in his day. The
ordinary version of course is part of the whole sequence of
episodes, but Berg's introduces itself with some information
taken from an earlier part of the Vitce Patrum: "Two
holy fathers, called abbots, lived in Egypt in the
22 ed, Charlotte d'Evelyn and Anna Mill, Early English Text Society, 1956.
23 Hms. II 335 ft.